As Facebook turned ten years old last month, a legal case it brought against Power Ventures almost six years ago demonstrates the continued hurdles facing developers who seek to empower users to interact with closed services like Facebook in new and creative ways. In a new amicus brief, we caution the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals not to extend crippling civil and criminal liability on services that provide competing or follow-on innovation.

EFF is offering four pairs of tickets to the sold-out Trustworthy Technology Conference on February 27 in San Francisco, CA. For the next week, we will host auctions for full TrustyCon admission. The winners of the auctions will each receive a year-long EFF Rare Earths Level Membership (normally a $500 contribution level) featuring the renowned NSA Spying hooded sweatshirt. The best part is that every dollar from these auctions will go directly toward funding EFF's digital freedom initiatives, so please bid today.

As the popularity of Bitcoins has increased, government officials are concerned about criminal activity associated with the virtual currency. But a recent subpoena issued by the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs to 19-year-old Bitcoin developer and MIT student Jeremy Rubin goes too far, and we're fighting back by moving to quash it.

Is a Wi-Fi signal the equivalent of an FM radio station, blasting classic rock ballads through your car speakers?

Not to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its long awaited decision in Joffe v. Google this week, the case where Google was sued for allegedly violating the Wiretap Act when its Street View cars sucked up data from wireless routers as it passed by.

Should we fear open source software? Of course not. But that hasn’t stopped federal courts from issuing bizarre warnings like this:

The court would like to make CM/ECF filers aware of certain security concerns relating to a software application or .plug-in. called RECAP … Please be aware that RECAP is “open-source” software, which can be freely obtained by anyone with Internet access and modified for benign or malicious purposes … .

To understand this strange edict, we need to review the history of RECAP and why it might be unpopular with court officials.